Ashes
by Elfin Maid
Summary: One walks in starlight, her laughter echoing across the woodland. The other screams out into the shadow, the pulse of the blood in her veins black. One rose, and the other fell, but it was all a dream. [For the lovely readers of TBE. One-shot.]


**This fic is for those of you who have followed the Tauriel Trilogy, be it since the very beginning of _So Be It_ or from the 25th chapter - though I'm now 32 chapters in! - of _The Beginning of the End (TBE)_. You all are the absolute best readers I could ever have hoped for, and though this is a very small gift, it's unfortunately all I have for now - beyond virtual hugs and heartfelt thank-you's. ;) Look for hints of what may or may not come to pass (see? I'm totally going all Lady Galadriel here) in the future of _TBE_. Some of this may actually be hooked into the very end of TBE.  
** **That being said, if you haven't read at least a bit of _TBE_ , this will make utterly no sense whatsoever. Believe me. You are welcome to try, but you will likely come away feeling rather unfulfilled and more than a little confused. I apologize.**

 **And so here you have it - shreds of past, future and present; pieces torn from a story I might have told differently, and jumbled here in no great work of art. I thought I had burnt them all long ago, and now the ashes are all that remain.  
Ahem. Excuse the melodrama.**

* * *

He sometimes wondered what it would have been like to not love her. To look at her and turn away in true hatred, and not the vague disgust he had forced himself to feel for her so long ago. To meet her gaze and not feel a spark deep in his chest, pushing him forward.

Tauriel turned to look at him curiously, her face painfully familiar. She quirked a brow upwards in question, and he found himself stepping forward - towards her.

Always her.

* * *

He was the Elvenking, and he was not ready. Even after centuries, he was still not ready. He briefly wondered if he would ever truly be ready.

She flitted through the door, all milk-pale skin and big green eyes and child-like features that belied her rotten core.

Thranduil looked at her and felt his face turn to stone.

Her teeth were sharp when she smiled at him, the tendons on her neck taught cords. "Hello, princeling."

* * *

Legolas ducked the blade whistling past his nose and made a mostly futile attempt to break through his enemy's defenses.

She laughed throatily, stepping lightly out of his reach. A moment later he found him himself staring upwards at the sky, another bruise adorning some part of his body.

She smiled down at him and extended a hand. "You are not even trying."

He winced as something popped. "I always try. The fact remains that I rarely win."

Tauriel laughed again, her daggers flipping in a memorizing rythm in each hand. "Perhaps you are not trying hard enough, then."

* * *

Audriel's fingers trailed along the stone walls, fingernails scraping lightly. "You have certainly accomplished much, Thranduil, I give you that." There was a hint of admiration in her voice.

He watched her impassively. "I wish I could say the same for you."

She turned to face him, eyes flicking over his features and then traveling down to the hand he had clasped tightly around the one thing that always, always calmed him.

"What's this?" she murmured, stepping forward and somehow peeling his fingers away from the object before he could move to stop her.

The finest jewels imaginable glinted brightly even in the half-darkness.

"Ah," she said gently, and abruptly there was understanding in her eyes. "These were your wife's. I am sorry." She carefully handed the necklace back to him. Her fingers, when they brushed his, were ice-cold.

* * *

The seasons were changing. She walked the woodland like a ghost, all fire-hair and quick, haunting laughter. He would attempt to follow her, but inevitably he would find himself stumbling back home, only to find her sitting on the bed, smiling, eyes gleaming.

"Where do you go?" he asked wearily, pulling off his weapons and dropping down beside her.

"I wander," she said sweetly. "The forest and I are one. Where they are I am too."

He groaned and ran a hand down his face, the other reaching out to play gently with her red locks. "I wish you would stop."

She frowned and leaned forward, her eyes burning green. "I can't," she said simply.

* * *

He still remembered the days in which they had both been happy. Bright smiles and races through the woodland, friendly fights and sweet, sweet laughter.

She had been the only one for him then, and now he sometimes wondered if she had ever been the only one he loved. Worried that the missing piece of him was something he would never, ever allow himself to find.

But her smiles had gone dark and dangerous, and inexplicably jealousy had boiled up in her chest.

Their friendship - what he had once thought would turn into so much more - shattered with but a few well-chosen, harshly delivered words.

"Thranduil?" Audriel suddenly said, and he was jerked from his memories. She was looking at him with a strange brokeness.

"Aye?" he said wearily.

"Why does my blood run black?" she whispered, and the insecurity in her voice sent chills racing down his spine. He watched, motionless, as she lifted a knife from her belt and dragged it down her palm, holding it up before first her eyes and then his own.

* * *

She faced him wrapped in white, the color off-setting the blazing red of her hair. She looked at him and smiled and smiled, and he could not help but return her easy grin.

"We will have a son," she said softly.

He stared at her in wordless disbelief and then reached for her, spinning her in circles as tears of joy stung his eyes. He pulled her to him, felt the pounding of her heart. "Thank you," he whispered, but knew that he need not have said anything at all.

* * *

"Why does it run black?" she said again, and suddenly Thranduil wanted to turn and find his way out of the stone walls and into the light.

"Audriel," he rasped. "No."

She looked at her hand, eyes wide and sad in the paleness of her face. "It does not hurt," she said softly. "It never does." She transfered the blade to her opposite hand and sliced downwards over the toughened skin of her palm. Blood spilled from the cut, not scarlet as it should have been, but darkly tinted. He watched it drip from her fingertips and fall to the floor, and could have sworn that the sound the small droplets made echoed.

"No," he repeated mindlessly.

"Why does it not hurt?" she asked again, and tears were sliding down her cheeks, hot and salty. "It should hurt. It _should_."

* * *

They awoke in darkness, father and son, and found themselves in another world, another time.

One reached out and found his crown of wood, forcing himself to place it atop his head. For him the dream was no more than a memory, a part of his past that he had, at long last, stopped trying to forget.

The other stared out into the beginnings of dawn, chest aching with something indefinable. His dream was not a memory; indeed, it was far from it. It was a shred of hope - hope that something he feared had been crushed could bloom once more.

Around them, life dragged itself onwards. They would dream again, and inevitably in their dream-worlds they would find themselves faced with blood-red hair and leaf-green eyes. And if the dream chanced to turn into a nightmare, they would see a lightning-quick smile full of deadly promise, and a silver blade would flash upwards, and the world would go dark.


End file.
